To Matthew Smith

Fused with the minerals of sun and earth,

spurting with smoke of flowers,

oil is incendiary on your moving brush;

your hands are jets

that crack the landscape’s clinker and draw forth

its buried incandescence.

These molten moments brazed in field and flesh

burn out for us,

but you can stand and nail within a frame

the fire we mourn,

can catch the pitchpine hour and keep its flame

pinned at the point of heat.

Our summer’s noon you pour into a mould,

a rose its furnace;

through green and blue its burning seeds unfold,

through night and day:

raked by your eyes the paint has never cooled.